GeoFluent for Telligent Enables Multilingual Social Communities

Social communities are great for communication, but what if they span several countries and different language zones? Social software provider Telligent is now offering a new integrated translation solution for its products.

Called GeoFluent for Telligent, the software combines Lionbridge Technologies’ software-as-a-service, customized real-time translation technology with Telligent’s enterprise social suite of applications.

IBM Machine Translation Engine

GeoFluent utilizes an IBM-developed machine translation engine with a proprietary Lionbridge customization. In addition to translation solutions, the Waltham, Mass.-based Lionbridge also offers online marketing, global content management and application testing. Dallas-based Telligent provides an enterprise-grade social platform, as well as community applications and social intelligence tools for employee networking, customer-driven support communities and interactive marketing communities.

The companies said one benefit of the solution is that expensive support calls in the country of origin can instead be handled through online forums, blogs and wikis, where information can be obtained regardless of language.

According to Lionbridge, over 90 percent of enterprise content does not reach non-English speaking audiences because of time and cost requirements. GeoFluent allows an organization to create a global online community, instead of separate communities for each language environment. The companies noted that administrative costs can be reduced by combing language-specific forums into one common space, where visitors can read and post in their own language.

All Content, All the Time

Utilizing multilingual support from major search engines, the companies said, such communities can now provide access to all relevant content on an 24 x 7 basis. All public-facing community content, in whatever language, becomes available when a visitor searches in any language.

Telligent Founder and CTO Rob Howard said in a statement that GeoFluent for Telligent “removes geographic and language barriers and ensures that marketing, customer service and key stakeholders are at the forefront of customer engagement.”

Lionbridge CEO Rory Cowan noted that “the next growth wave for enterprise social software is global market adoption with local-market relevance.” He added that, by breaking the language barrier in social communities, organizations can increase revenue conversions and expedite time-to-market, as well as boost the quality of customer experience.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Report: Amazon Bargaining for Texas Instrument’s Mobile Chip Branch

Is Amazon negotiating to buy Texas Instruments's (TI) mobile chip operation? A new report says it is.

The report, from the Hebrew-language publication Calcalist, remains unconfirmed by either company, but it would mesh with TI’s recent announcement that it will concentrate on embedded platforms such as cars, and reduce its involvement in OMAP chips for smartphones and tablets.

Billions of Dollars

TI announced in late September that it would “reduce R&D expenditures” on the OMAP system-on-a-chip (SoC) used in a wide variety of tablets, including Amazon’s, and smartphones. Observers interpreted the announcement to mean that TI was leaving the mobile chip business, even as Intel has ramped up its investment in that market. The OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) chip was developed by TI.

The Calcalist report was authored by Assaf Gilad, who had been the first to report that Apple was interested in buying Anobit, a Israeli flash storage company. The technology giant did buy that company early this year, for about US$ 390 million.

If Amazon does buy TI’s chip business, it would gain greater control over the mobile destiny of its Kindle Fire tablets — and for smartphones that it might be developing. Samsung Electronics makes its own mobile chips, and currently manufactures Apple’s mobile chips, mostly based on Apple designs. However, Apple and Samsung are engaged in a worldwide patent war, and there have been numerous reports that Apple intends to take its chip manufacturing business elsewhere.

On the other hand, the deal would likely cost Amazon billions of dollars for a stake in a highly competitive chip industry, where smaller chip makers are struggling. It would also turn the virtual retailer’s focus more toward hardware.

Nook’s Vulnerability

The competitors who could benefit from TI’s move include Samsung, which, according to some estimates, could reach a 50 percent share of the OMAP SoC application processor market if TI’s operation is sold. Other beneficiaries could include Qualcomm and Nvidia, which together represent as much as 35 percent of the market. TI’s share had been in the 15 to 20 percent range.

One big competitive question is how this might affect Intel, which has said it will ship a dual core, Atom-based SoC before 2013.

The other big competitor impact could be on Barnes & Noble, which uses TI chips for its Nook tablets and e-readers. At the very least, having the Nook’s processor brains dependent on the chip subsidiary of its key competitor could put Barnes & Noble in a weakened bargaining and strategic position — and lead it to find another chip maker.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com